Outside, the sun looked like a phoenix departing for the day to slumber for the night. The sky was orange as if a fiery storm had passed by. The tree was glowing again. At least, the clearing wouldn’t be completely dark in the night. The tree was washing its surroundings in a faint, but ghastly red glow. Mannat was not faint-hearted, but even he felt the light uninviting. The other colors would glow as the night deepens; for now, it was all he had to work with.

He remembered the evening the tree roots had erupted from the ground, enraged and out for blood. They had separated the two worlds and opened a hollow dark entrance to its womb. He wouldn’t have dared go down the stairs if the tree was glowing red at that time.

He also remembered the naked angel that slept inside the womb made of roots. She, who was, the personification of beauty looked at peace, but he had felt the terror sleeping inside her chest. It was but a speck of darkness, of unbound malice, yet he knew it could turn the most beautiful of souls into a rotten, vile pest.

There, in the garden underground, he had left his mother. She also suffered from a similar, if not the same perturbation. He didn’t know if the angel, whom the Witch called the ‘Flower of morality’ was alive or not. He hadn’t heard the sound of her breathing or saw her soft and bare chest undulating, but he knew his mother was still with him, though lost in a long dark dream.

There was no time to waste. Less than a month, that’s all the time he had. He wanted to see his mother healthy and smiling, cooking him food and ordering him around the house. He yearned to hear yelling at him for keeping a dirty house. He was so close to her; he would have been urging the Witch to let him see his mother once more if she was around.

That’s to say, he did notice something. The Witch’s magical staff, the key or the artifact she used to open the underground chamber, was right there in front of the tree. It stood tall at the same exact place where she had stabbed it to open the chamber. It was waiting for someone to hold it in a tight nourishing grip and quench its thirst.

Perhaps, it was waiting for him. The staff and its magical charms definitely attracted Mannat, and he approached the staff with bubbling anticipation.

He stopped a few feet away from the staff, scared and vigilant of the consequences. What would he do if the ground swallowed him? He wanted to touch it, however, use it to open the chamber and meet his mother. It took him a while to made up his mind and stop hesitating. Four steps and an eternity later, the staff was half an arm’s length away from him. It looked like a stick stuck in the ground. It didn’t look special. Neither was its crystal head glowing nor was the staff pulsating with life.

Mannat inhaled a deep breath, held it, and calmly put his hand on the blue crystal globe head, and… nothing happened. He exhaled the breath in relief. He had no idea what he would do if there really were some fluctuation of energy in response to his presence, distance, especially touch.

However, it would be wrong to say he wasn’t disappointed. He was. He wanted to open the tomb without the Witch’s help. However, there was also an attraction of control overpower. He shook the staff and pulled it out of the ground. “Is it broken?” he mumbled and stabbed it back it in back in the grove with a click of his tongue. The failure squashed all of his hopes.

There was no lightning or shaking, quaking and tremors. The only thing there was, but the tweeting of a bird that had decided to take perch on the glowing tree, even though it should be frightened, or at least vigilant of the faint red, yellow light flashing through the leaves and the trunk of the tree.

“Can’t even figure out this little thing, dull boy?” The voice, hoarse, sharp, and grating, was like a thorn in Mannat’s ears. His ears twitched, his face fell, heartbeat rose. A shiver took his back and his hair rose wherever it passed. He jumped back, shook his head, and searched for the demon. He was caught red-handed handing the Witch’s property. She was bound to be furious!

He found her, not somewhere else but right behind him! He hiccupped. Her torso was slouched forward since she didn’t have her staff to hold. Her eyes were yellow and piercing, the skin was old as the trees, and dark hairs were disheveled and thick like blades of grass. Her hands were hanging by the side, the first time he had seen them so lifeless. Her arms were long, dispiritingly so. She had thin, bony fingers. Her nails were dark and pointed, like the claws of a beast.

For a second Mannat’s heart rate climbed to the high hundreds. The Witch stared without blinking as if waiting for him to act. The old hag was going to give the poor boy a heart attack!

So much drama for a piece of wood; she should have taken it with her if it was so precious. Why leave it out in the open for crows to shit at and rabbits to drill?

Mannat pulled the stick out of the ground and steadily walked toward her. She didn’t say anything and simply took the staff from him. She looked it over, snorted, and then bopped it at his head.

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Mannat cried in pain. He put his hands on top of the head to shield it from another blow. The crazy Witch didn’t hold back. She hit him hard. Was there any blood? At least Mannat didn’t feel his hands grow wet. That was a relief. Nevertheless, the pain was harsh. Maybe she liked his cry because she didn’t hit him again, but spoke to him.

“Are you so tired of living that you wanted to blow yourself up?”

“What?” Mannat was so astonished he forgot about the waves of pain rampaging in his skull. BLOW UP! Well, that would have been a quick death. Mannat gulped a mouthful of bitterness, but couldn’t take his shocked eyes off the Witch. She was not kidding.

The Witch smirked when she saw his reaction. “It would have been an accident, of course.” She said smugly. Mannat frowned, and she added, “What? Do you think you can use the staff? It wouldn’t even light up with your paltry amount of mana.”

Mannat wasn’t impressed. She was speaking gibberish again. “It was not funny.” He said. His voice was cold, as was his heart. He really believed her. His father was right: there was something wrong with the old woman. No one sane would make such a selfish joke.

The Witch didn’t take his tone to heart, but sneered, showing her gaping black teeth. Standing so close to her Mannat noticed that though black, her teeth weren’t rotting; and it wasn’t only her teeth that were black, but her whole mouth, including her tongue and throat. That was even more shocking than her joke. He didn’t know or remember what, but her mouth reminded him of something … something equally dangerous. The name was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

The witch asked, “Do you want to see your mother so badly that you decided to give wind to caution and act stupid?”

“I was curious.”

“Blunt,”

“It’s far better than being sly.”

The witch’s lips twitched. This was why she liked the kid. He didn’t fear her.

“We’ll see how far it takes you.” She said passing him by. The Witch slowly made her way to the place where the staff was resting. She raised the stick in the air and stabbed it back in the grove in the ground. She didn’t let it go and suddenly, the staff flashed in a vibrant blue. Mannat backed up urgently and shaded his eyes with a hand, believing she was opening the door to the underground chamber. To his disappointment, the ground didn’t shake and the roots didn’t appear. Instead, a ring of blue light seeped into the ground from the staff before vanishing.

Then nothing happened afterward. Mannat waited, but the world had come to rest. The wind was blowing again and his heart was bitter.

“What did you do?”

The witch ignored his question and slowly stammered toward the hut. She was slower than turtles and snails. Even clouds were faster than her. Mannat didn’t understand what she was doing. “Why are you leaving the stick behind?”He asked in confusion. Did she not need it? Was it for him?

The Witch kept walking. Perhaps, she couldn’t stop. Mannat watched her sway away from him. It was only when he thought she had forgotten about him, her voice drifted over the wind and met his ears. “Use it whenever you wish to meet your mother.”

Surprised, happy, and then distraught. Mannat ran after her yelling. “I don’t know how to do it.”

The witch flinched at his words, stopped walking, and looked back. Mannat also came to halt almost instantly. They were close enough to hear each other's breaths. “It’s simple,” The Witch said. Mannat’s ears perked up. He was ready to receive guidance, but he forgot he was talking to a selfish old coot. The Witch’s eyes turned into crescents when she smiled and haughtily said, “Use your wisdom and figure it out.”

Seeing Mannat frown, she nodded to herself, turned back, and ambled toward the hut. Mannat stood behind dumbfounded until the darkness beyond the wide-open doors swallowed her.

Left with no options and pending doom, he followed the Witch. She was inside and sat on the other side of the table. She was using a hand to support her back, and the other was rapping the tabletop, probably waiting for him. With only a little light from the window, she was a frightening figure in the dark. Shadows converged around her like demons. The glow of pale multicolored light gave depth and texture to her wrinkled skin. It was not difficult to understand why Mannat stood at the door but didn’t go past the threshold.

“Do you want something?”

“I--” Thoughtlessly he stammered out some words then shook his head and simply left. It helped that he had already decided to sleep under the tree. The Witch only made the decision easier. He was hoping to see his mother, but that was obviously not possible anymore. The Witch had clearly shed the responsibility and put it on his hands. Now, he could see his mother whenever he wished, the only problem was his lack of knowledge.

Left with no choice, Mannat sat under the tree with his back resting against the trunk and crossed his leg. He closed his eyes and started trying to improve his mana sense. This was his third objective besides studying and gardening. Mana in the air was free and under no one’s control, hence the easiest to perceive.

The giant tree behind his back was oozing a huge amount of mana into its surroundings with every breath. He used to think of mana as something otherworldly; now he wondered if mana flowing in the world had similar origins to the Witch’s growing tree. He found it incomprehensible to even imagine the sheer size of the monstrosity that could fill the whole world with mana. It would have to be big enough to touch the sky; perhaps, big enough to pierce the ceiling!

Such a tree would have branches thick enough to for people to build homes upon, and its root must have dug deep enough to touch the earth’s heart.

The normal-sized tree behind him –though its trunk was big enough to need three people to wrap their arms around—could barely meet the requirements of the area around the village. There was a reason his village had not suffered a drought in years. The same couldn’t be said about the other parts of their backwater region. Their evergreen land was the biggest reason behind the dispute between them and the neighboring villages.

He wondered if he would see the monstrous tree someday.

Such thoughts filled Mannat’s mind. Some excited and others depressed him. Nevertheless, the one flash of brilliance he wanted to witness evaded him incomprehensively. His mana sense remained stable at level 8 even after the night passed and morning came.

Perhaps, the truth that he had evidently fallen asleep sometime in the middle of the night had something to do with it. Whatever the case, he had one less day remaining to become the Witch’s apprentice.